O signo cor na narrativa fílmica: uma perspectiva peirceana

Abstract

The advent of colors in cinema has aroused reflections since the first films appeared, when the chromatic scales were still absent, but already problematized the effects and optical suggestions with the spectators. Such was the polyvalence achieved in the historical transition from manual colorization of films to manipulation provided by digital technology, that we identified the need for a method capable of substantiating the legitimation of possible interpretations of this element in films. To this end, we propose to approach color as a sign according to The Semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce, extracting from his Speculative Grammar, whose basis is phenomenological, the key concepts that serve us as a reference to punctuate the steps of an analytical script that begins at the level of immediate feelings: in the aesthetic field, and reaches, depending on the case, the level of thoughts: the logical field. Starting from this approach, and locating the colorful in the sphere of filmic narrative, we resorted to authors such as Júlio Plaza (2003) and Lúcia Santaella (2002), whose studies benefit from the Peircean current for an applied semiotics, as well as Martine Joly (1994), who transits between Semiology and Semiotics. Our objective is to verify and exemplify how colors are linked to the content of films, using specific knowledge about the chromatic phenomenon in cinema, Semiotics and instruments of film analysis, to analyze the qualities of colors, what they denote, how they do it, and what effects they can cause in the interpreter; validating, to some extent, the activity and interpretive subjectivity of the spectators. By proposing and demonstrating a method we seek to deepen the filmic experimentation through the chromatic sense layer.